Helping make Jesus real in the lives of families

I’m Only Sorry on Sundays–Lying Part 2

Parents will do almost anything for our kids, but apologizing to them doesn’t come easily to us. Who among us will readily admit when we’ve lied or messed up? Sinned? Our culture rarely models apologizing, confessing our sins, or extending forgiveness. We as parents need to do that for our kids.

And it pinches. That’s why I’m a big fan of prayers of confession during worship. Even silent ones. More often than during quarterly communion. It’s hard to pretend you’re always right and noble when you all confess your sins together each week. It does make us uncomfortable; we aren’t very good at it. Or if we only confess during church, our kids can see right through us. We need to keep short accounts the rest of the week, apologizing and asking for forgiveness when we wrong others, even our families. Especially our families.

Conversely, we may feel so overwhelmed by our sin we skip over God’s forgiveness. I have seen both in the Church. When I first visited a large church and experienced a corporate prayer of confession, I couldn’t believe how incredibly brief the silent confession time was. “What?” I thought, “I’m just getting started here on my sins. Do all these lovely people have it all together? Am I the only one who sins so much?” Nope. I later found out the service was broadcast on the radio and they weren’t allowed dead airtime. But what it unintentionally communicated to me was my inadequacy. I now give a long stretch of quiet time for confession. I do warn church goers that it’ll seem like a long time. And it does. Taking time to confess is good for our souls. It gives the Holy Spirit time to whisper, shout, prompt, or whatever the Holy One needs to do in our case.

At one church when I taught adult an Sunday school class on confession during Lent, a woman turned to her neighbor in all seriousness and said, “What’s all this talk about sin? I don’t sin, do you?” He replied, “Nope, I just mess up sometimes.” This is the same church that changed the words to Amazing Grace from “that saved a wretch like me” to the more pleasant “that saved someone like me.” But it’s hard to confess and be forgiven by God if you never face your sinfulness.

In a recent Sunday school class, I had kids play confession pictionary and charades. They acted out the things which we often do which are wrong, which require confession and apology. They had fun with the charades, from fighting over a toy, to hitting a sibling, to lying, to not sharing the last apple. They got carried away and soon were acting out murdering people and burgling houses. We then got back on track and practiced a prayer of confession, repeating a spoken prayer and adding some silent time, then saying, “Jesus, please forgive me.” At the end, they looked each other in the eye and assured each other of their forgiveness, “Jesus loves you no matter what.”

Does teaching your kids confession feel tricky to you? The hard part is the confessing our “junk,” especially out loud before our spouse or kids. You can do this; let me help out. Only two lines to memorize: 1) “Jesus, please forgive me.” 2) “Jesus loves you no matter what.” Practicing these simple, yet powerful phrases between Sundays could go a long way toward healing our families. Lord, have mercy.